Social Structure and the Potential for Urban Change: Boston and Charleston in the 1830s

The importance of labor systems & racial composition in determining a city's method of Ur development are elucidated in a comparison of antebellum Boston, Mass, & Charleston, South Carolina. Although both cities' actions were shaped by a core of elites devoted to protecting their own positions & maintaining social stability & community cohesion, their specific methods of promoting Ur development differed. Boston developed an exclusive system of clubs & societies that preached the doctrine of upward mobility, while Charleston, dominated by a social network of personal ties, promoted an organic social theory based on a familial & patriarchal view of government. As a result, Boston accomplished its Ur development goals in keeping with the nineteenth-century national focus on the work ethic, economic mobility, & the rationalization of government, while Charleston remained a traditional commerical city. R. McCarthy